College Kid.

With less than a month in this less than stellar semester at school, the professors are discovering that the syllabus wasn’t some sort of weird nightmare and that we all have to get cracking if we are going to be ready for the next Big Test. Professor Frightful and his cast of characters that live in the chalk board (and only speak to him) decided that our next exam will be extra long to catch up with the syllabus, but as a bonus we’ll get to take it home so that we can share the merriment with the family. This may save me. Please disregard the bags under my eyes when that day comes.

In Surveying class we are running speed trials on how fast we can set up equipment that is so obsolete it has a built in abacus. Earl is constantly reminding me that I must learn the basics so that I can appreciate the technology that is available to a budding engineer such as myself, and when my classmates share my complaints I remind them that Rome was built without a computer and I suppose we could do the same just so we can appreciate the good old days. Besides, I hear Caesar was hot.

For the past two hours I’ve been struggling with inverse coordinates in coordinate geometry. The method we are using is for checks and balances purposes. I have numbers that are positive. I have numbers that are negative. I have numbers that dance on a calculator and I have numbers that dance in my nightmares. I know they’re matching with something out there and I’m confident I’ve drawn my required maps properly, I just can’t prove it. To keep the mood giddy, we have a quiz on all this tomorrow.

Maybe I’ll go raid the stash of cookies in the cupboard. Just don’t ask me to find the diameter of a Lorna Doone.

With less than five weeks left in this semester and the bulk of my required projects done I am eagerly looking forward to my next semester which starts at the end of January. The college began class registration this week and I was online nice and early to make sure I had the prime seats I had my eye on.

I’ve mentioned before that my experience with my math professor has been interesting in that he has a unique teaching style that could be summed up in one word: “null”. Last I knew my grade in this class was decent (he hasn’t returned homework, quizzes or tests in two or three weeks) but I’m confident that I’ll at least get through the course and not have to repeat it. So I went ahead and scheduled myself in the next required math course in the sequence, which is also my (thank the universe) last required math course.

There’s one class available with 30 seats. And guess who the professor is! Naturally it’s Professor Frightful and his cast of voices that live in the chalkboard. I can’t even escape to the sanctuary called distance learning over the internet.

Many of my classmates are skipping the next math class next semester but I really can’t do that if I want to graduate on time so I’m going to have to suck it up and do my best.

I’m still looking forward to the next slate of classes. My schedule is a little more balanced next semester and I believe I’ll have ample time to devote the time necessary to my coursework.

With today being observed as Columbus Day here in the states I didn’t have school today. I figured it would be the perfect day to catch up on my homework and get my scholarly affairs in order. Tomorrow we pretend it’s Monday at school to make up for the day off. It’s all very scholarly.

I really chose a sucky schedule this semester. Actually, I’m hoping that I chose a sucky schedule because the alternative would be that I’m not cut out for what I’m studying for and I’m not prepared to make that judgment yet.

Anyway, the professor gave us a handout entitled “Trigonometry” with the simple instructions, read it and do these exercises: 2, 28, 44, 194, 30, 36, 61 and 202. You think they’d be in numeric order but no, there they are in a seemingly random order, which works well with the handout, as the exercises are numbered equally as randomly.

I figured two hours would be enough to get this assignment done. I’m such a fool. I didn’t factor into the equation another variable: said handout is a print out of a webpage and he printed it out in color, and then photocopied everything in black and white, so highlighted phrases and all the figures and diagrams are missing from the packet.

How long ago did I accuse my professors for not giving a flip as to what their handouts contained? Chalk this up to the “they don’t give a damn” column.

Luckily, he used Internet Exploder Explorer to print out this lesson, so I was able to see the address of the site and look up the diagrams and key phrases he conveniently left off of the paper.

I feel bad for my fellow students that might not have a computer at home.

I should have become a porn star. Then I would just have to worry about inches.

When I decided to go back to school back at the end of last year, I met with the adult education (cue Hall and Oates) advisor and mentioned one of my biggest concerns about being a back-to-college adult.

P.E.

I had visions of being a nearly 40-year old man, clad in sweatpants and a sweatshirt, straining to keep up with my 18 and 19-year old peers as they raced through some obscene obstacle course involving push-ups, pull-downs, wrestling and cartwheels. They’d point and laugh and I’d end up being picked last for some game involving a medicine ball.

It’s the stuff nightmares are made of.

When I met with the advisor, she advised me that in lieu of physical education classes, I could take a two credit health class to meet my P.E. requirements. I’m in that health class this semester.

I should have risked the medicine ball.

When I mentioned the collection of depressing students last week, I was referring to many in my Tuesday and Thursday morning health class. I’ll just come out and say it, this is a class of slackers. This is a group of young men and women that have little interest in living a healthy lifestyle. They’re in this class just for the health credit and are willing to go to 8 a.m. class to get through it. They look like the last vegetable they ate was courtesy of Gerber and their physical exercise is limited to their thumbs on their Wii. The teacher is also the men’s soccer coach and he is a lively, excited, motivating, physical fitness type of guy that I enjoy listening to. When he speaks about the benefits of watching your cholesterol, I’m ready to swear off McFood for the rest of my life. When he talks about the rush from aerobics, I’m ready to run a miracle mile.

The rest of the class isn’t so moved.

One of the requirements of the class is two write a one-and-a-half page article review about the health topic of your choice. It’s a piece of cake. I whipped mine out in an hour or two. There’s a few requirements: 1. It must be typed. 2. It must be turned in on the day we’re talking about that topic. 3. You must take a few moments to tell the class a little bit about your article and review. As I said, a piece of cake. Hell, you can even pull something off the web and write about that. I gave a presentation on nutrition last week, becoming quite animated when I told my classmates that the healthiest way to grocery shop is to play “ring-around-the-rosie” and shop around the perimeter because the processed stuff is on the inner aisles.

It’s amazing how many of my fellow students find this assignment to be difficult. During the break today, I overheard future-Woofster (my private little nickname for him) talking to Sniffles (a portly girl that seems to have a constant cold) about his paper. He was concerned because his computer wasn’t working so he had opted to write the paper in longhand, which was against the assignment requirements. Sniffles said, “Yeah, I was having a hard time typing the paper too because my computer was acting gay.”

When I hear something like this I arm myself quickly with witty retorts, because the “acts gay” thing gets on my nerves.

1. “Did chiffon leap out of the monitor?”
2. “Was iTunes stuck on Barbra?”
3. “Did the computer print on it’s screen Lions and tigers and bears oh my?”

Before I was able to inquire as to what made her computer “gay”, she quickly apologized to future-Woofster for using that term. My response was twofold. First of all, she didn’t need to be chastized, she already knows that her phrasing was inappropriate and secondly, future-Woofster bats on my team as he responded, “That’s o.k., I know what you mean.”

Nevertheless, when presentation time came around, future-Woofster had bolted from the classroom five minutes early so he wouldn’t have to give the presentation and risk turning in his paper written in longhand.

‘Tis a pity, I’m sure it would have been an easy A.

So I’ve completed my first week of back to school. It has been an interesting week getting acclimated with the schedule and doing that whole time management thing so that I am able to work and study, get to class on time and fit some playtime in as well.

For the first time since returning to college I have a professor that I really don’t care for. He seems like a nice enough guy in that he has a friendly demeanor and whatnot but he is completely devoid of social or lecturing skills. It’s like he becomes a pod person as soon as the class starts. His voice falls to this flat monotone and then for 50 minutes, four days a week he stands in the front of the room, writes on the board by banging his chalk like some warped IBM Selectric or crazy teletype machine and talks to the wall that’s holding up the blackboard. When he’s not talking to the wall, he’s talking to someone that’s apparently outside of this universe because he sort of has conversations with this invisible person. Today he told the wall that “they’re bored”. Once in a great while he’ll turn around and seem rather startled by the fact that he has a room of 30 students sitting there. Occasionally he’ll ask the wall if it has any questions and then he’ll move on without waiting for an answer. Today he forgot to take attendance and started beckoning the exiting students back into the classroom after half the class had left.

Surprisingly, the 50 minutes tend to fly by. Perhaps it’s because of the 30 students in my class, you see, all of them are guys. At least I have something to browse while he’s having a conversation with his chalk.